AFRICAN AMERICANS IN YELLOW SPRINGS
This is the final article in a series that examines racial diversity in
Yellow Springs, including its history, its current decline, and possible
causes and solutions.

By Diane Chiddister

For Jewell Graham, the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s were exhilarating
times to live in the village. Having come to Yellow Springs as a young
African-American woman with her new husband, Paul, who after graduating
from Antioch had been offered a job at Vernay Laboratories, Graham was
impressed with the quality of relationships between blacks and whites.
Many businesses were integrated in a way unusual for the time, and a passion
for the civil rights movement further brought people together. There was
considerable socializing between blacks and whites in her world, as well
as a sense of shared purpose.

“To me, what was exciting was that I felt we were on the cutting
edge of relationships between people of different races and backgrounds,”
said Graham, who went on to establish the social work department at Antioch
College. “It felt like we were a demonstration of how things could
be.”

Having been raised in Springfield, which was still largely segregated,
Graham was impressed with the vital role that blacks played in village
life. Families like the Lawsons and Bennings were longtime leaders in
the community, and blacks and whites had worked together to integrate
the Little Art Theatre in the late 1940s. The major workplaces —
Vernay, Yellow Springs Instruments, and Antioch Bookplate, as well as
the college — employed African Americans in professional positions,
and the town had a lively black middle class. When the civil rights movement
heated up in the late 1950s, many villagers came together to help achieve
equal rights for all races.

“People had a common enterprise,” she said.

Hardy Trolander, one of the founders of YSI, also remembers those years
as heady ones. He and his wife, Gene, were deeply involved in the civil
rights movement, and he and Paul Graham together brought a suit to the
Ohio Supreme Court that sought equal treatment for blacks at Gegner’s,
a Yellow Springs barbershop. (The court dropped the suit after the shop
closed in the early 1960s.) Socializing between blacks and whites was
common, Trolander said, at least partly because people tended to socialize
with those with whom they worked, and most work places were integrated.
As well as the civil rights movement, Trolander remembers blacks and whites
working together to create a new swimming pool at Gaunt Park.

But more than 30 years later, Jewell Graham sees fewer blacks in town
and misses the vital friendships between the races that she once experienced.
She wonders if the change reflects national trends. With the success of
the civil rights movement, blacks can now live anywhere they want, so
the village is no longer the oasis that it once was for professional blacks.
And perhaps the village mirrors what appears to be a national trend of
blacks and whites being more isolated from each other.

For whatever reason, things have changed in Yellow Springs.

“This town is still interesting, but to me it’s not as interesting
as it once was, regarding the vitality of relationships,” she said.
“The key word is ‘uniqueness.’ I believe we’ve
lost the uniqueness in that arena.”

Effects of diversity

This Yellow Springs News series has examined several possible factors
that may have contributed to the diminishing -African-American population
in Yellow Springs, including a lack of jobs and high housing costs. There
are multiple perspectives regarding why, exactly, the local population
of blacks has declined, but there is no arguing with the fact that there
has been a decline, from about 27 percent of the population in 1970 to
about 15 percent in 2000, with a greater drop anticipated by some in this
year’s census.

While villagers have long been proud of local racial and cultural diversity,
they less often define exactly how this quality enhances the village.
What does diversity add to Yellow Springs? Perhaps more relevantly, what
does the village lose when it loses racial diversity?

Living in a small town that is racially diverse “makes us bigger,
broader and better,” according to Faith Patterson, one of the founders
of the African American Cross-Cultural Works, or AACW.

Living closely with those of different races and culture helps us to discover
the commonalities of being human, and that understanding makes us stronger,
Patterson believes. She also believes that children who grow up in a diverse
community are better prepared for adulthood in the wider world.

“We’re doing our young people a serious injustice to not offer
the opportunity to relate to those who are different than ourselves,”
she said.

A community rich in racial diversity helps to combat the corrosive effects
of racism and prejudice, according to Village Council President Judith
Hempfling.

“Part of what has been compelling and powerful about Yellow Springs
has been the strength of the African-American community,” she wrote
in a recent e-mail. “We need relationships and friendships across
racial lines. We need to know one another, learn from one another and
support one another and our children need the same. We need to work to
remove racism from our daily lives and our institutions...If Yellow Springs
does nothing to address the shrinking of the African-American community,
we will all be diminished.”

The legacy of racial diversity in Yellow Springs was one quality that
drew Council member Lori Askeland and her husband to the village, she
wrote in an e-mail. An English professor at Wittenberg University, she
sees that students in more homogenous classes seem to write, and perhaps
to think, with less clarity, she said.

“They are not having to write for multiple audiences, and in so
doing, having to rub up against ideas and perspectives that make them
rethink their whole way of being, or at the very least articulate their
thoughts more clearly,” she wrote.

There’s no question about the positive effects of racial and cultural
diversity to students in his classes at Antioch University McGregor, according
to Joe Cronin, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the school,
where 20 percent of the student body is African American.

“Your ideas are challenged by those who think differently,”
he said in a recent interview. “This is what you want in a classroom.”

Research on the effects of racial diversity in the workplace and in the
community has produced a variety of conclusions. A considerable number
of studies (Hoffman and Maier, 1961; Nemeth, 1995; Phillips, Mannix, Neal,
2004) indicate the benefits of diversity, including that a racially diverse
workplace offers “increased group creativity, information sharing,
flexibility and thoughtfulness,” according to a summary of diversity
studies that concluded that “diverse groups deliberated longer and
considered a wider range of information” in making decisions.

A 2006 thesis titled “On Racial Diversity and Group Decision Making”
by Samuel Sommers of Tufts University concluded that, “In many circumstances,
racially diverse groups may be more thorough and competent than homogeneous
ones” because these groups spend more time deliberating, use their
time productively and hold more comprehensive discussions, with “improved
performance from white as well as black” workers.

But there can also be a downside to racial diversity, as concluded in
2007 by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam in the largest study
so far of the effects of racial and cultural diversity on civic life.
After he compiled information from 30,000 Americans who lived in both
urban and rural settings, he found that the short-term effects of increased
diversity is heightened distrust that appears to undermine civic life,
with more diverse communities reporting less voting, less volunteerism
and less common work on community projects. In the most diverse communities
studied, neighbors trusted each other about half as much as they do in
more homogeneous settings, the study concluded.

Because the study included not just whites and African Americans but also
Hispanics and Asians, its relevance to Yellow Springs seems limited, because
those groups face not just racial differences but also language and cultural
ones. Still, the study emphasizes that diversity comes with challenges.
The key, according to Putnam in a New York Times 2007 article, is for
communities to invest in initiatives that promote “meaningful interaction
across ethnic lines.”

Building bridges

One approach for promoting meaningful interaction between races has taken
place in Buffalo, N.Y., where civic leaders launched a program called
Mosaic Partnerships that aimed to build new relationships.

Introduced by Mayor William Johnson in 2001, the program has been successful
in forging links between leaders of the African-American and white communities,
according to Dash Douglas in the article, “Turning Diversity into
an Asset: How Mosaic Partnerships Helps Communities Achieve their Potential.”

The program aims to increase the number of “weak tie” relationships
between those of different racial backgrounds, the article states. As
opposed to the “strong tie” relationships between family members
and close friends, “weak tie” relationships arise from casual
positive social interactions, according to social scientists, who identify
“weak ties” as being “the key mechanism for mobilizing
resources, ideas and information,” in a community, as well as “essential
to the creative environment.” Basically, the more opportunities
for positive social interaction between racial groups, the better.

The Mosaic project started from the simple premise that cohesion is best
pursued one relationship at a time. In its first year, the program invited
30 leaders from the African-American and white communities to divide into
15 mixed-race pairs, who were asked to have 16 half-hour meetings over
a year. Participants were simply asked to get to know each other, and
the pairs also met periodically in small groups to share experiences.
Each year new participants were added.

The program, which has since been replicated in Milwaukee and Greensboro,
N.C., is considered a success, according to Douglas, who wrote that Mosaic
Partnerships facilitated new friendships and networking that has sparked
a variety of new projects that enhanced civic life.

Stay welcoming

Fewer blacks in the village can precipitate an even greater decline in
the African-American population, according to Village Council member John
Booth, because blacks visiting town see few familiar faces and feel less
likely to want to live here.

“If it’s not as diverse, it feels less welcoming,” Booth
said, recalling visiting Yellow Springs as a African-American boy growing
up in the region. “When I came to Yellow Springs I felt welcome,
and in other small towns I did not.”

Booth has a keen interest in the reason that African-American villagers
seem to be leaving town, and he’s conducted informal interviews
to find out why. Some cite the lack of jobs in the village, and others
cite high housing costs. To address that issue, Booth would like to see
more density allowed in the village, including more inexpensive, well-maintained
rental -properties.

During the recent visioning effort, some local African Americans said
that village culture falls short in offering leisure-time activities favored
by blacks, according to Booth. For instance, more blues and jazz musical
offerings, such as the annual AACW Blues Fest, would both attract African
Americans from out of town and help local blacks feel at home, he said.

Some local African Americans feel distrustful of local government, he
said, but he believes there is a role for Village Council to play in increasing
and enhancing diversity.

“Council members need to keep our eyes and ears open, to look for
more opportunities to be more welcoming,” he said. “We need
to listen.”